tempus fugit//memento mori

It's August 9. How is that possible? How is it that this summer - really, this entire year - has gone so quickly? Back in May, I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do this summer. We won't talk about how many of them I haven't done... but isn't that always how it goes?

The Latin phrase tempus fugit - "time flies" - is often joined with memento mori - "remember death." To us, the time we have never seems to be enough, does it? ... whether it's the impending end of summer, or the end of our lives.

How much do we focus on the time we have being not enough... vs. the time God gives us being exactly enough - exactly what we need to accomplish what is asked of us?

Considering the passage of time: today marks 70 years since the execution of St. Edith Stein - also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. For those who are unfamiliar, St. Edith Stein was Jewish by heritage and upbringing, but abandoned the Judaism of her youth for atheism as a teenager. Several years later, she returned to faith in God, then converted to Catholicism, and eventually joined a Carmelite monastery.

As a Jewish convert to Catholicism, she was a twofold target of the Nazis, and the Carmelite order tried to protect her by moving her to a monastery in the Netherlands. However, when the Dutch bishops openly condemned the racist activities of the Nazis, government officials in the Netherlands who were Nazi sympathizers retaliated, and had all Jewish converts to Catholicism arrested. St. Edith Stein was among them. A short time later, on August 9, 1942, she and her sister (also a convert to Catholicism), were executed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. St. Edith Stein was 50 years old.

To some, 50 years seems like a very long time. To others, (perhaps those who understand their mortality a bit better), 50 years is virtually the blink of an eye. Either way, long or short, 50 years was what St. Edith was given, and what she made the most of.

Tempus fugit, memento mori is a dual reminder... that time flies, and thus we must be mindful of our mortality, as we don't know how much of that fleeting time we have. It's a reminder that, in the time we have, the world we live in - as St. Edith Stein said - "does not simply need what we have. It needs what we are."

+Peace and good.